Churches are doing the best they can to balance the safety and security of their congregations with the mandate to share the gospel. Pastors and members need our prayers and support during these difficult days.

The Sacramento Region of about 2 million people in four counties includes 90 Southern Baptist churches and two church plants. Thirty-two of the churches worship in an Anglo context; the others, ethnic, including 24 African-American and seven Hispanic.

When church planters Drew and Shannon Cunningham moved to Santa Cruz in 2016, population 65,000, there were no Southern Baptist churches in their target area. “The longer we’ve been here the more we’ve seen the Lord planted us here,”

More than 50 trained California Southern Baptist Disaster Relief chaplains have volunteered to staff a prayer line to minister to those quarantined, isolated or discouraged because of the COVID-19 crisis.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic "is no time to turn our eyes away from the sanctity of human life," Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore said in a column published Thursday (March 26) in The New York Times.